Mary later married his younger brother, the future King George V. Albert Victor's intellect, sexuality, and mental health have been the subject of speculation.

He was christened Albert Victor Christian Edward in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace on 10 March 1864 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, but was known informally as "Eddy".

Possible physical explanations for his inattention or indolence in class include absence seizures or his premature birth, which can be associated with learning difficulties,[8] but Lady Geraldine Somerset blamed Albert Victor's poor education on Dalton, whom she considered uninspiring.

[12] In 1879, after a great deal of discussion between the Queen, the Prince of Wales, their households and the Government, the royal brothers were sent as naval cadets on a three-year world tour aboard HMS Bacchante.

[13] They toured the British Empire, accompanied by Dalton, visiting the Americas, the Falkland Islands, South Africa, Australia, Fiji, the Far East, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Egypt, the Holy Land and Greece.

[15] At Bachelor's Cottage, Sandringham, Albert Victor was expected to cram before arriving at university in the company of Dalton, French instructor Monsieur Hua, and a newly chosen tutor/companion, James Kenneth Stephen.

[19] At the start of the new term in October, Albert Victor, Dalton, and Lieutenant Henderson from Bacchante moved to Nevile's Court at Trinity College, which was generally reserved for accommodating dons rather than students.

[20] He was introduced to Oscar Browning, a noted don who gave parties and "made pets of those undergraduates who were handsome and attractive",[21] and became friendly with Dalton's godson, Alfred Fripp, who later became his doctor and royal surgeon.

[24] One of Albert Victor's instructors said he learnt by listening rather than reading or writing and had no difficulty remembering information,[25] but Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, had a less favourable opinion of him, calling him "an inveterate and incurable dawdler".

Under police interrogation, the male prostitutes and pimps revealed the names of their clients, who included Lord Arthur Somerset, an Extra Equerry to the Prince of Wales.

[32] The resultant Cleveland Street scandal implicated other high-ranking figures in British society, and rumours swept upper-class London of the involvement of a member of the royal family, namely Prince Albert Victor.

[33] The prostitutes had not named Albert Victor, and it is suggested that Somerset's solicitor, Arthur Newton, fabricated and spread the rumours to take the heat off his client.

[34][35] Letters exchanged between the Treasury Solicitor, Sir Augustus Stephenson, and his assistant, Hamilton Cuffe, make coded reference to Newton's threats to implicate Albert Victor.

[46] According to one American press report, when departing the Gare du Nord in Paris in May 1890, Albert Victor was cheered by a waiting crowd of English, but hissed and catcalled by some of the French; one journalist present asked him if he would comment "as to the cause of his sudden departure from England".

[49] In surviving private letters to his friend Lord Esher, Somerset denies knowing anything directly about Albert Victor, but confirms that he has heard the rumours, and hopes that they will help quash any prosecution.

He wrote, I can quite understand the Prince of Wales being much annoyed at his son's name being coupled with the thing but that was the case before I left it ... we were both accused of going to this place but not together ... they will end by having out in open court exactly what they are all trying to keep quiet.

[51]The rumours persisted; sixty years later the official biographer of George V, Harold Nicolson, was told by Lord Goddard, who was a twelve-year-old schoolboy at the time of the scandal, that Albert Victor "had been involved in a male brothel scene, and that a solicitor had to commit perjury to clear him.

Over twenty years later in 1910, Newton was struck off for twelve months for professional misconduct after falsifying letters from another of his clients, the notorious murderer Dr Crippen.

[54] The foreign press suggested that Albert Victor was sent on a seven-month tour of British India from October 1889 to avoid the gossip which swept London society in the wake of the scandal.

[63] In the 1920s, however, the son, Clarence, repeated the story and published a book in the United States, My Uncle George V, in which he claimed he was born in London in September 1890, about nine months after Albert Victor's meeting with Mrs. Haddon.

By this time however, Albert Victor was falling in love with Princess Hélène of Orléans, a daughter of Prince Philippe, Count of Paris, a pretender to the French throne who was living in England after being banished from France in 1886.

[75] When Albert Victor died, his sisters Maud and Louise sympathized with Hélène and treated her, not his fiancée Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, as his true love.

[85] Rumours also surfaced in 1900, after Albert Victor's death, of his association with another former Gaiety girl, Maude Richardson (birth name: Louisa Lancey),[86] and that the royal family had attempted to pay her off.

His absence at sea, and on travels and duty with his regiment, kept him out of the general eye ... at times, there was a sallowness of hue, which much increased the grave aspect ... not only in the metropolis, but throughout the country, somehow, it was always said, 'He will never come to the throne.

[108] On the day of Albert Victor's death, the leading Liberal politician, William Ewart Gladstone, wrote in his personal private diary "a great loss to our party".

In the mid-20th century, the official biographers of Queen Mary and King George V, James Pope-Hennessy and Harold Nicolson respectively, promoted hostile assessments of Albert Victor's life, portraying him as lazy, ill-educated and physically feeble.

[40] Aronson's judgement was based on Albert Victor's "adoration of his elegant and possessive mother; his 'want of manliness'; his 'shrinking from horseplay'; [and] his 'sweet, gentle, quiet and charming' nature",[40] as well as the Cleveland Street rumours and his opinion that there is "a certain amount of homosexuality in all men".

[113][114] It was later alleged, among others by Stephen Knight in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, that Albert Victor fathered a child with a woman in the Whitechapel district of London, and either he or several high-ranking men committed the murders in an effort to cover up his indiscretion.

[116] Other fanciful conspiracy theories are that he died of syphilis or poison, that he was pushed off a cliff on the instructions of Lord Randolph Churchill, or that his death was faked to remove him from the line of succession.

[119] Biographer Andrew Cook continued attempts to rehabilitate Albert Victor's reputation, arguing that his lack of academic progress was partly due to the incompetence of his tutor, Dalton; that he was a warm and charming man; that there is no tangible evidence that he was homosexual or bisexual; that he held liberal views, particularly on Irish Home Rule; and that his reputation was diminished by biographers eager to improve the image of his brother, George.